So True

What Southern Baptist today was involved in any of that at all?

 

I know W.A. Criswell was very outspoken and very much against desegregation.

 

This statement is not entirely accurate. I would suggest you research this a bit more.

 

This type of reply continues to be part of the problem. Folks like YOU, not Obama, are truly what divide the country. Because the many of you continue to call yourselves Christians but seem to always be absent the Christ of Christianity.

There are PLENTY of Southern Baptists still alive who took part in the atrocities of the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and the 10s.

It is UNCHRISTLIKE to NOT seek reconciliation.

And if folks who act like you don't have enough decency in your heart to realize why reconciliation is needed, then folks like you need to also need to sit down and be quiet about the 53,000,000 million murdered baby atrocity that I'll assume you also weren't involved.

 

The statement is accurate. If Criswell was outspoken and against desegregation, the only way for it to not be "entirely accurate" would be for it to be false.

 

I have spent hundreds of hours researching an existing movement of today called "Biblical Segregation." I wrote my thesis refuting this unbiblical notion that blacks and whites are not to worship together. W.A. Criswell, among others, was indeed an outspoken supporter of segregation.

 

Criswell was outspoken against forced government desegregation. During all of his railings he often said agreed with integration in principle.

 

After these landmark rulings [Brown -vs-Board of Education] southern state legislators felt slighted. In their minds, the recent rulings reached to and destroyed the central character of Southern culture. South Carolina governor George Timmerman arranged for renowned religious leader W. A. Criswell to speak on the issue. Criswell was pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, a key church of the Southern Baptist Convention. Criswell spoke, “Let them integrate. Let them sit up there in their dirty shirts and make all of their fine speeches. But they are all a bunch of infidels, dying from the neck up. Don’t force me by law, by statute, by Supreme Court decision to cross over into those intimate things where I don’t want to go. Let me build my life. Let me have my church. Let me have my school. Let me have my friends. Let me have my home. Let me have my family.”

"Criswell Not the Pope of Southern Baptists,” Christian Century (March 14, 1956)

 

thanks for making my point

 

Not sure how I did that, but you're quite welcome. I'm always happy to help a brother. Thumbsup

 

I agree 100%. I have referenced his notes on several occasions. I do not have to agree with every aspect of a man's theology or philosophies of life to consider him a good man worthy of respect. I merely quoted him in answer to the OP about the SBC's historic involvement in the race issue. I can only pray that my life leaves a fraction of the positive influence that Dr. Criswell left behind.

 

When will folks stop feeling sorry for themselves, take accountability for their own life and living and invest in their family so the children do not grow up ignorant of how to conduct business and communicate successfully?

History is history, and people cannot be held accountable as a product of their time and upbringing when they are long dead.

This is the present. Give history its acknowledgement and move on.

It is sad that some consider they need to make or hear some kind of apology that often comes with a desire for some reparation that has already been paid in full.

 

Nobody . . . NOBODY outside the convention in my 35 years of hobnobbing with the Southern Baptists even mentions race when talking about their objections to the Southern Baptists.

I ONLY hear this from inside.

But even if it were true, the church owes no man an apology. Don't think all this groveling will give the conventions any credibility in the eyes of the world. The world hates Christ, and the more christlike one becomes, the more he suffers.

Want honor from those outside the church? Leave Christ. Perform your proper prostrations to the gods of the market place, and you will have the praise of men and Zaac.

 

The church owes God an apology for this continued brand of wickedness from folks who say they are his followers.

And as the article didn't mention anything about groveling or apologies, one must wonder if the fires of racial prejudice have once again been stoked by the radicalized right and a political partisanship about Presidents or Congresses apologizing for slavery.

It is a pure wickedness that continues to deny that Christians during slavery and, as the author alludes, during the more recent Civil Rights era, were directly feeding the racism and racial prejudice. “Southern Baptists were not just implicated in racial injustice, we were directly feeding it.

Same thing is happening today and sadly, most folks who say they are following Christ can't acknowledge it because of selfishness and a heart that lacks humility.

So BRAVO to Matthew Hall and the other Southern Baptists on the panel who get it.